Efficiently measuring phase differences in an angle of arrival system

ABSTRACT

An angle of arrival system is configured to efficiently measure phase differences. The angle of arrival system includes a master receiver for demodulating the signal received at one antenna and for implementing a tracking loop to identify the timing of symbols within the signal. This timing information can be fed back as a synchronization signal to a despreader in the master receiver and to a despreader in each of a number of slave receivers to synchronize the timing at which each signal is despread. Because despreading is synchronized, the outputs of the despreaders can be used to directly calculate phase differences between each pair of signals. In this way, the slave receivers do not need to implement a demodulator or a tracking loop. When the received signal is a non-spread signal, the phase differences between each pair of signals can be calculated directly from the modulated samples of each pair of signals without despreading.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

N/A

BACKGROUND

Geolocation refers to techniques for determining the geographic locationof an object. Various types of geolocation exist. The present inventionis applicable to environments where the object to be geolocated emits asignal. In such environments, various measurements can be performed onthe received signal to estimate the location of the emitting object. Forexample, a receiver can perform angle (or direction) of arrivaltechniques to estimate the angle between the emitting object and theboresight vector of the receiver's antennas.

Angle of arrival techniques are often performed by detecting phasedifferences at a number of antennas that receive the signal emitted bythe object. In such systems, each antenna is coupled to a receiver thatis configured to detect the phase of the signal received at thecorresponding antenna. To accomplish this phase detection, each receiverimplements a tracking loop to produce an output indicative of the phase.These outputs can then be compared to identify the phase differencesbetween the signals received at each pair of antennas.

Various issues exist with such techniques. For example, because thephase of each received signal is detected, a “full” receiver—i.e., onethat demodulates the signal and implements a tracking loop to detect thephase of the received signal—is required for each antenna. In angle ofarrival systems that employ many antennas, implementing a full receiverfor each antenna significantly increases the system's complexity. Also,tracking loops could slip and therefore, to implement a reliable system,a mechanism for detecting and correcting cycle slips is required whichfurther increases the complexity of the system. Additionally, trackingloops are typically configured to maintain link in a worst casescenario. As a result, the tracking loop performs little averaging whichreduces the overall accuracy of the angle of arrival measurements.

BRIEF SUMMARY

The present invention extends to an angle of arrival system that isconfigured to efficiently measure phase differences. The angle ofarrival system includes a master receiver for demodulating the signalreceived at one antenna and for implementing a tracking loop to identifythe timing of symbols within the signal. This timing information can befed back as a synchronization signal to a despreader in the masterreceiver and to a despreader in each of a number of slave receivers tosynchronize the timing at which each signal is despread. Becausedespreading is synchronized, the outputs of the despreaders can be usedto directly calculate phase differences between each pair of signals. Inthis way, the slave receivers do not need to implement a demodulator ora tracking loop.

Because a single master receiver is employed, the overall complexity ofthe angle of arrival system is greatly reduced. Additionally, becausephase difference is measured directly, as opposed to first determiningthe phases and calculating the differences between the determinedphases, the phase differences are less susceptible to variations in theperformance of the angle of arrival system.

In one embodiment, the present invention is implemented by an angle ofarrival system as a method for identifying an angle of arrival of asignal incident on an antenna array by employing phase differencesbetween the signal when the signal is received at multiple antennas ofthe antenna array. The signal received at each of the multiple antennasof the antenna array is processed through a corresponding channel. Eachchannel includes a despreader. In a first channel of the multiplechannels, the corresponding signal is demodulated and tracked togenerate a synchronization signal which identifies the timing of symbolswithin the corresponding signal. The synchronization signal is providedto the despreader in the first channel and to the despreader in each ofthe other channels to thereby cause each despreader in each of themultiple channels to synchronously despread the corresponding signal. Acovariance matrix is generated from the despread signals output from thedespreaders. An angle of arrival of the signal is calculated using thecovariance matrix.

In another embodiment, the present invention is implemented as an angleof arrival system that includes: a first channel for processing a signalreceived at a first antenna in an antenna array, the first channelincluding a despreader, a demodulator, and a tracking loop, the trackingloop outputting a synchronization signal that identifies timing ofsymbols within the signal, the synchronization signal being provided tothe despreader to control timing of the despreader; multiple additionalchannels for processing the signal received at each of multipleadditional antennas in the antenna array, each additional channelincluding a despreader, the synchronization signal being provided to thedespreader in each of the additional channels to control timing of thedespreader; and a covariance matrix component configured to receive thedespread signals output from the despreader in each of the channels andto generate phase differences between each pair of despread signals.

In another embodiment, the present invention is implemented as anintegrated circuit that includes: a first despreader and multipleadditional despreaders, each despreader being configured to despread asignal that was received at a different antenna of an antenna array; ademodulator for demodulating the signal output by the first despreader;a tracking loop coupled to the demodulator, the tracking loop generatinga synchronization signal which identifies timing of symbols within thesignal processed by the first despreader; and a covariance matrixcomponent that is configured to receive the signals output by each ofthe despreaders and to calculate phase differences between each pair ofthe signals. The synchronization signal is provided to the firstdespreader and to each of the multiple additional despreaders tosynchronize the timing at which each despreader dispreads thecorresponding signal.

This summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described below in the DetailedDescription. This Summary is not intended to identify key features oressential features of the claimed subject matter.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Understanding that these drawings depict only typical embodiments of theinvention and are not therefore to be considered limiting of its scope,the invention will be described and explained with additionalspecificity and detail through the use of the accompanying drawings inwhich:

FIG. 1 provides a block diagram of an angle of arrival system that isconfigured in accordance with embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 2 illustrates examples of corresponding samples of modulatedsignals that are processed through two channels of an angle of arrivalsystem;

FIG. 3 provides a block diagram of a portion of the angle of arrivalsystem of FIG. 1; and

FIG. 4 provides a block diagram of another angle of arrival system thatis configured in accordance with embodiments of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In this specification, the term “master receiver” or “full receiver”will be used to refer to a receiver that includes components fordespreading and demodulating a signal. In contrast, the term “slavereceiver” will be used to refer to a receiver that includes componentsfor despreading a signal, but does not include (or does not employ)components for demodulating the signal. An angle of arrival systemconfigured in accordance with embodiments of the present inventionincludes a master receiver and multiple slave receivers.

FIG. 1 generally illustrates the architecture of an angle of arrivalsystem 100 that is configured in accordance with embodiments of thepresent invention. Angle of arrival system 100 includes the followinggeneral components: an antenna array 100, an emitter 110, a radiofrequency (RF) circuit card assembly (CCA) 120, and a converter CCA 130.Each of these components is represented in dashed lines to indicate thatthe components may be incorporated into or implemented on the samestructure or one or more different structures. The depicted division ofthese components is therefore for illustrative purposes only.

Antenna array 100 includes multiple antennas 101 a-101 n (where nrepresents some integer greater than one) and a corresponding number oflow noise amplifiers (LNAs) 102 a-102 n. For purposes of illustration,it will be assumed in the remainder of this description that n equalseight such that eight channels are implemented within angle of arrivalsystem 100 to process the received signal. Antennas 101 a-101 n could beoriented in any arrangement suitable for performing angle of arrivaltechniques. As is known, the location of an emitting object can bedetermined using angle of arrival techniques by calculating thedifferences in the phases of the signal emitted by the object when thesignal is received at each of antennas 101 a-101 n. In particular, whenthe object is at an angle offset from the boresight vector of antennaarray 100, the signal will be received at slightly different times (dueto the different distances between the object and the particularantenna) resulting in different phases.

As will be described more fully below, the signal that is received atantenna array 100 may be a spread signal that has been spread using aphase modulated spread code or another type of spread code. By spreadingthe signal, the object whose location is being detected can transmit thesignal covertly below the noise floor (i.e., as a low probability ofintercept/low probability of detection (LPI/LPD) signal). LNAs 102 a-102n can perform their typical function to amplify the signal received ateach antenna 101 a-101 n.

The output of each LNA 102 a-102 n can be provided to a down converter121 of RF CCA 120. Down converter 121 can convert each signal to a lowerfrequency that is suitable for subsequent processing by the componentsof converter CCA 130. It is noted that, in some embodiments, thefrequency of the received signal may be low enough to be provideddirectly to converter CCA 130 such that down converter 121 would not benecessary.

Regardless of whether the signals are down converted, they can beprovided to corresponding analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) 131 a-131n which are shown as being components of converter CCA 130. It is againnoted, however, that ADCs 131 a-131 n could be incorporated into RF CCA120 or into another component. Each of ADCs 131 a-131 n outputs digitalsamples of the respective analog signals.

The digital samples produced by ADCs 131 a-131 n are input to FPGA 140.Specifically, digital down converters 141 a-141 n can be implemented inFPGA 140 to down convert the digital samples to a lower frequency and/orsampling rate. At this point, a sequence of digital samples will existin each channel with each sequence representing the same received signalshifted by some amount (assuming the signal is received at some angleoff boresight). These sequences are then processed through matchedfilters 142 a-142 n to maximize power transfer.

Despreaders 143 a-143 n can employ the known spread code to despread thesignal. A course acquisition component 170 can be implemented to providetiming information to one of the despreaders, which in this case isdespreader 143 a. This timing information is not precise, and therefore,the despreading may not be performed at the correct time. It is due tothis imprecision that a full receiver implements a tracking loop.

Accordingly, for one of the channels, a full receiver can beimplemented. As shown in FIG. 1, the output of despreader 143 a,identified as r₁, is provided to demodulator 144 which demodulates thesignal. In some embodiments, the demodulated signal can be provided to aforward error correction (FEC) component 146 and then output for furtherprocessing although such processing is not necessary for angle ofarrival purposes.

A tracking loop 145 is also implemented on the r₁ channel to performfine synchronization of the spread code. For example, tracking loop 145could be in the form of a delay-locked loop (DLL) or a phase-locked loop(PLL) which can output a synchronization signal that is provided back todespreader 143 a. This synchronization signal precisely identifies thetiming of the symbols in the received signal to thereby allow despreader143 a to perform despreading with high precision. In other words, thesynchronization signal will define when a particular symbol starts andwhen the particular symbol stops in the received signal.

Additionally, this synchronization signal output by tracking loop 145 isprovided back to each of despreaders 143 b-143 n for the same purpose.Accordingly, the r₁ channel implements a master (or full) receiver toproduce a synchronization signal that is used to control the timing ofthe remaining despreaders 142 b-143 n. As such, the r₂ through r_(n)channels can be viewed as implementing slave receivers since they do notimplement (or at least do not use) their own demodulators or trackingloops. Instead, the timing of despreading is synchronized across each ofdespreaders 143 a-143 n based on the output of tracking loop 145 in ther₁ channel. Accordingly, tracking loop 145 determines when a symbolstarts in the received signal being processed through the r₁ channel andsynchronizes the operation of despreaders 143 b-143 n to this timing.

Due to this synchronization, the modulated outputs, r₁ through r_(n), ofeach of despreaders 143 a-143 n, can be fed directly to a covariancematrix component 147 which employs conjugate multiplication oncorresponding samples to generate a covariance matrix that identifiesthe differences in phase between each channel. Notably, each of the r₁through r_(n) signals is still modulated and therefore does not identifythe actual phase of the signal. The actual phase of the signal receivedat antenna 101 a is not identified until the r₁ signal has beendemodulated and processed through tracking loop 145. On the other hand,the actual phase of the signals received at antennas 101 b-101 n isnever directly identified. However, by synchronizing the despreadingacross each channel using a master receiver, the phase differencesbetween each channel can be still be extracted without demodulating ther₂ through r_(n) signals.

FIG. 2 provides an example of how this master/slave technique allows thephase differences to be determined. FIG. 2 depicts the magnitude andphase of the r₁ and r₂ signals at three samples taken at times t₁, t₂,and t₃. The synchronization of despreaders 143 a-143 n ensures that thesamples at each of these times fall within the same symbol. As shown,there is a small variation between the phases of the r₁ and r₂ signalsat each of these times. Such a variation would occur when the distancebetween the object emitting the signal and antennas 101 a and 101 b isdifferent. In this example, it is assumed that the phase of the r₁signal trails the phase of the r₂ signal by about 12°. This differencecan be directly calculated from the modulated r₁ and r₂ signals as r₁r₂*where * represents the conjugate. Similar calculations can be performedbetween each pair of signals to thereby determine the phase differencebetween the signals received at each pair of antennas 101 a-101 n. Toincrease the accuracy of the phase difference calculation, averaging canbe performed over multiple samples. For example, the average of thephase difference between the r₁ and r₂ samples taken at times t₁ throught₃ can be determined.

Once the covariance matrix has been calculated, and preferably afteraveraging the covariance matrix values over a period of time, covariancematrix component 147 can output the covariance matrix values to amicroprocessor (pP) which can efficiently calculate an estimate of theangle of arrival of the emitted signal. The microprocessor (pP) cangenerate and update the estimate based on the (averaged) values of thecovariance matrix received from covariance matrix component 147 and theknown relative locations of antennas 101 a-101 n. Although thiscalculation of the angle of arrival is shown as being performed in aseparate microprocessor, it could equally be performed within FPGA 140or in any other suitable circuitry.

Although not essential to the present invention, angle of arrival system100 may also include a transmission path defined by transmitter 148,digital up converter (DUC) 149, digital-to-analog convert (DAC) 132, upconverter 122, power amplifier 111, filter 112 and antenna 113. An angleof arrival system may include this transmission path to enable it toalso be used as an emitter so that angle of arrival techniques can beperformed at another similarly configured node. For example, anaircraft, vehicle, or any other object whose location is to be trackedcan be equipped with an angle of arrival system 100 configured tooperate in transmit mode while an aircraft carrier, building, or anotherstructure can be equipped with another angle of arrival system 100configured to operate in receive mode.

To summarize, conventional angle of arrival systems implement a fullreceiver on each channel to demodulate and identify the phase of thereceived signal prior to calculating the phase differences betweensignals. The present invention, in contrast, employs a single masterreceiver to determine the timing of symbols in the received signal beingprocessed through one channel and then synchronizes the despreading ofthe signal in each channel based on this timing. In this way, thepresent invention enables an angle of arrival system to have reducedcomplexity. By omitting tracking loops from all but the master receiver,the present invention also avoids the difficulties/complexities causedby cycle slipping within the tracking loop and facilitates averagingphase differences over a number of samples.

To this point, it has been assumed that the signals are synchronizedwhen they reach despreaders 143 a-143 n. In practice, however, eachchannel will exhibit a different delay which will likely cause thesignals to be out of sync at despreaders 143 a-143 n. For example,differences in cable lengths used to connect the components of antennaarray 100, RF CCA 120 and converter CCA 130 as well as variations ingroup delay may cause the various signals to be misaligned by the timethey reach ADCs 131 a-131 n. Also, each of ADCs 131 a-131 n will likelyintroduce a different phase error into the digital samples (e.g., due tovariations in the length of the traces that apply the clock to each ADCthereby causing each ADC to sample the corresponding signal at aslightly different time). As a result, the digital samples input to FPGA140 for each channel will likely be misaligned. In other words, thephase differences between signals as they enter FPGA 140 will notaccurately represent the phase differences that existed between thesignals as they reached antennas 101 a-101 n which would introduceerrors into the phase differences calculations.

To address these misalignment issues, additional components can beimplemented within FPGA 140 to identify and apply an appropriate delayto each channel so that each of the signals is synchronized atdespreaders 143 a-143 n. FIG. 3 illustrates an example of FPGA 140 withthese additional components.

In FIG. 3, FPGA 140 includes a fine delay component 301 a-301 n and acourse delay component 302 a-302 n for each of the n channels. In someembodiments, fine delay components 301 a-301 n can be componentsprovided in FPGA 140 at the I/O boundary and course delay components 302a-302 n can be programmed (e.g., using VHDL). In any case, both finedelay components 301 a-301 n and course delay components 302 a-302 n areprogrammable to apply a specified amount of delay to the correspondingsignal as it passes through the channel towards the corresponding DDC141 a-141 n. Typically, fine delay components 301 a-301 n providepicosecond resolution while course delay components 302 a-302 n canprovide for greater delays as necessary.

To determine the amount of delay that each of fine delay components 301a-301 n and course delay components 302 a-302 n should apply, thedigital samples of the signals that are input to DDCs 141 a-141 n can becaptured in RAM 303 over a period of time. This period of time could beat startup as part of initializing angle of arrival system 100 or at anyother time when it may be desirable to resynchronize the channels. Thepurpose of capturing samples over a period of time is to allow a crosscorrelator 304 to perform a cross-correlation (or sliding dot product)on the series of samples for pairs of channels. This cross-correlationwill yield a peak when the two spread signals are aligned. The amount ofthe shift required to create this peak will define the relative delaybetween the two signals.

In conjunction with calculating the relative delay between the pairs ofsignals, cross correlator 304 can output control signals to fine delaycomponents 301 a-301 n and/or to course delay components 302 a-302 n asrequired to delay each signal by an amount that will cause all signalsto be aligned. As mentioned above, this alignment may be performed onceat startup to ensure that the signals are synchronized upon reachingdespreaders 143 a-143 n. In some embodiments, additional alignments maybe performed manually or automatically to account for any changes indelay caused by operating conditions or other factors.

FIG. 4 illustrates an alternate embodiment where an angle of arrivalsystem 400 does not include despreaders 143 a-143 n and can therefore beemployed when the received signal is a non-spread signal. In thisembodiment, the modulated outputs r₁ through r_(n) are provided directlyto covariance matrix component 147 which identifies the differences inphase between each channel in the same manner as described above. Inparticular, covariance matrix component 147 calculates the relativephase differences between each signal without demodulating the signalsto identify the actual phases of the signals.

As shown in FIG. 4, angle of arrival system 400 may still includedemodulator 144, tracking loop 145 and FEC component 146 to allow datato be recovered from the received signal, but these components areoptional and not required to detect the angle of arrival. Also, in someembodiments, angle of arrival system 100 can be configured to allowdespreaders 143 a-143 n to be selectively bypassed when a non-spreadsignal is received such that the same hardware configuration can beemployed to implement both the spread and non-spread scenarios. Althoughthe non-spread configuration shown in FIG. 4 is suitable for angle ofarrival purposes, the spread configuration of FIG. 1 may be preferablein many implementations because it provides robustness in the presenceof multipath.

The present invention may be embodied in other specific forms withoutdeparting from its spirit or essential characteristics. The describedembodiments are to be considered in all respects only as illustrativeand not restrictive. The scope of the invention is, therefore, indicatedby the appended claims rather than by the foregoing description.

What is claimed:
 1. A method, implemented by an angle of arrival system,for identifying an angle of arrival of a signal incident on an antennaarray by employing phase differences between the signal when the signalis received at multiple antennas of the antenna array, the methodcomprising: processing the signal received at each of the multipleantennas of the antenna array through a corresponding channel, eachchannel including a despreader; in a first channel of the multiplechannels, demodulating and tracking the corresponding signal to generatea synchronization signal which identifies the timing of symbols withinthe corresponding signal; providing the synchronization signal to thedespreader in the first channel and to the despreader in each of theother channels to thereby cause each despreader in each of the multiplechannels to synchronously despread the corresponding signal; generatinga covariance matrix from the despread signals output from thedespreaders; and calculating an angle of arrival of the signal using thecovariance matrix.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the otherchannels does not include a demodulator or a tracking loop to controlthe timing of the corresponding despreader.
 3. The method of claim 1,wherein the multiple channels comprise at least four channels.
 4. Themethod of claim 1, wherein each channel includes a matched filter thatis configured to control the timing of the corresponding despreader. 5.The method of claim 4, wherein each channel includes a digital downconverter.
 6. The method of claim 5, wherein the despreader, the matchedfilter, and the digital down converter in each channel are implementedon an FPGA.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein each channel includes ananalog to digital converter that converts the corresponding signal todigital samples and provides the digital samples to an input of theFPGA.
 8. The method of claim 7, further comprising: capturing a seriesof digital samples from each channel; comparing the series of digitalsamples from one or more of the channels to the series of digitalsamples for each of the other channels to identify a relative delaybetween the respective channels; and modifying a delay applied to atleast one of the channels to synchronize the signals that are providedto the despreaders.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein comparing theseries of digital samples from one or more of the channels to the seriesof digital samples for each of the other channels comprises performing across correlation on the series of digital samples for each pair ofchannels.
 10. The method of claim 8, wherein modifying a delay appliedto at least one of the channels to synchronize the signals that areprovided to the despreaders comprises one or both of: modifying a finedelay component at an IO boundary of the FPGA; or modifying a coursedelay component implemented in the FPGA.
 11. An angle of arrival systemcomprising: a first channel for processing a signal received at a firstantenna in an antenna array, the first channel including a despreader, ademodulator, and a tracking loop, the tracking loop outputting asynchronization signal that identifies timing of symbols within thesignal, the synchronization signal being provided to the despreader tocontrol timing of the despreader; multiple additional channels forprocessing the signal received at each of multiple additional antennasin the antenna array, each additional channel including a despreader,the synchronization signal being provided to the despreader in each ofthe additional channels to control timing of the despreader; and acovariance matrix component configured to receive the despread signalsoutput from the despreader in each of the channels and to generate phasedifferences between each pair of despread signals.
 12. The angle ofarrival system of claim 11, wherein each channel also includes a matchedfilter and a digital down converter.
 13. The angle of arrival system ofclaim 12, further comprising: a cross correlation component that isconfigured to receive a series of samples of the signal from eachchannel and to perform a cross correlation on each series to identify arelative delay between the signals.
 14. The angle of arrival system ofclaim 13, wherein each channel also includes a fine delay component anda course delay component, and wherein the cross correlation component isconfigured to adjust a delay applied by the fine delay component and thecourse delay component in each channel based on results of the crosscorrelation.
 15. The angle of arrival system of claim 14, wherein eachchannel also includes an analog to digital converter, and the series ofsamples of the signal from each channel are obtained after the analog todigital converter.
 16. The angle of arrival system of claim 11, whereinthe covariance matrix component performs conjugate multiplication oneach pair of despread signals.
 17. The angle of arrival system of claim11, further comprising: one or more processors that calculate an angleof arrival of the signal based on the phase differences output by thecovariance matrix component and a known arrangement of the antennas inthe antenna array.
 18. An integrated circuit comprising: a firstdespreader and multiple additional despreaders, each despreader beingconfigured to despread a signal that was received at a different antennaof an antenna array; a demodulator for demodulating the signal output bythe first despreader; a tracking loop coupled to the demodulator, thetracking loop generating a synchronization signal which identifiestiming of symbols within the signal processed by the first despreader;and a covariance matrix component that is configured to receive thesignals output by each of the despreaders and to calculate phasedifferences between each pair of the signals; wherein thesynchronization signal is provided to the first despreader and to eachof the multiple additional despreaders to synchronize the timing atwhich each despreader dispreads the corresponding signal.
 19. Theintegrated circuit of claim 18, further comprising: a cross correlationcomponent that is configured to retrieve a series of samples of thesignal input to each despreader and to perform a cross correlation onpairs of the series to identify a relative delay between thecorresponding signals; and a fine delay component and a course delaycomponent for each of the despreaders, the cross correlation componentbeing coupled to each of the fine delay components and the course delaycomponents to adjust a delay caused by the fine delay components and thecourse delay components based on the cross correlation to thereby causethe signals to be synchronized when provided to the despreaders.
 20. Theintegrated circuit of claim 19, further comprising: a matched filter anda digital down converter for each of the despreaders, the signal beingprocessed by the matched filter and the digital down converter prior tobeing processed by the despreader.
 21. A method, implemented by an angleof arrival system, for identifying an angle of arrival of a signalincident on an antenna array by employing phase differences between thesignal when the signal is received at n antennas of the antenna array,the method comprising: processing the signal received at each of nantennas of the antenna array through a corresponding channel to producen sequences of modulated samples; generating a covariance matrix fromeach set of corresponding modulated samples in the n sequences; andcalculating an angle of arrival of the signal using the covariancematrix.
 22. The method of claim 21, wherein calculating an angle ofarrival of the signal using the covariance matrix comprises performingaveraging on the covariance matrices generated over a period of time.